Searching

There comes a time in everyone's life when meaning is sought and some kind of personal relevance becomes necessary. Though we all like to believe that we are unique and very special, in the grand scheme of things we seem quite irrelevant... just another living grain of sand.

What happens next?

Once we live out our earthly existence, what happens next? Faith tells believers that something else exists, but on another plane, on a different level. There is disagreement over what the level is and when exactly it is attained. Some believe that it will be attained at the "Last Judgement," when Jesus Christ returns with God the Father to determine who will go to heaven and who shall be damned to hell. Others believe that we immediately cross over to a new plane upon our earthly death and that we immediately find peace and harmony or our own personal hell. Yet others believe that we must go through many cycles of birth and death before we get to our paradise. And finally, there are those who believe that life is everything; there is no before or after, therefore whatever one experiences in life is heaven or hell, depending on how it happens to be working out.

Who is correct?

It is all faith. Many, who believe that there is no life after death, express that their conclusions are based on science. But how can a complete scientific conclusion be made if new discoveries are still being made? Is it just faith in a different dress? New finds are made daily and yesterday's scientific beliefs are often times shattered in favor of new discoveries and understandings. 200 years ago a person describing today's television would have been branded a heretic or a witch or insane or any combination. His description would've been -- there will someday be a box in everyone's home that will talk and display pictures from around the world. 200 years ago science had yet to discover the usefulness of radio waves, eventhough they have always existed. Religion would agree with science... both would come to understand and accept what we now know as television.

What Exists?

So how is today any different? Just because one does not understand something does not mean that it does not exist. Just because someone believes in something does not mean it exists... but at some point perhaps both will be reconciled... In the meantime if ones faith is in religion that is fine, as is a counterpart's faith in science -- one should be open-minded and realize that God may not be who or what one may expect.
Why do we pray? Who do we pray to? Is prayer the same as meditation? Why do we put so much stock in faith? What is faith? Why is there faith? Does God hear me? Does God exist? Is he an old man dressed in a white robe with a flowing white beard? What about His son? Does He have long brown hair and a beard? Those who argue that God made us in his image... why do they cut their hair and shave their beards? Those who believe God does not exist at all -- how do they know? Scientific journals constantly publish new studies or discoveries, which reverse previous theories that were once dogma.

"The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds" – Mark Twain

Transistors...

The discovery of the transistor revolutionized electronics. Besides its comparitive size and heat advantage, the transistor forced us onto a path -- how do we know that is the correct path to follow?

Was it correct to abandon gas tube development in favor of the transistor?

If we had never discovered the transistor how would we have evolved? Would we not have made an equally important discovery in gas tube technology that may have had the same abilities or even superior ones? How do we know that we would not have discovered a method of harnessing atmosphere itself to do the things that are now done with transistors?

Digital vs Analog...

Analog technology - analog is infinite whereas digital is our representation of certain aspects of analog. In analog all things exist whether we believe that we sense them or not. Ambience is determined by the combination of all of the parts including those that are seemingly not sensed. Digital is our representation of only small segments of the analog environment. We like to pretend that we are God and carve away that which we believe is not used... But is it not used or do we not fully understand how it is used? One of the beauties of human invention is that we will ultimately take this to its extreme, so though we are seemingly breaking up the analog into the pieces that we understand, we will, no doubt, continue to break it down into smaller and smaller pieces until we arrive at a molecular or atomic level, which will ironically be a type of "digital-analog" or simply analog...